Registrars raise alarm over proposal for big .com fee hikes
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
At the end of 2019, Verisign had 158.8 million domains registered. At a price of $7.85/year, that's about $1.247 billion in expected revenue for 2020.
If we assume that the number of domains remains static forever, this change means that after the next price hike of 7%, they will see an additional $87.26 million of annual revenue.
By the end of the decade, given the same assumptions above, they will see an additional annual revenue of $895.28 million on top of their existing $1.247 billion.
All that extra money without providing any additional value to the customer. I'm sure many a celebration was had when they got the go-ahead to raise prices like this.
And your assumption that no new services will be added is likely untrue. Over the past decade all registrars have had to add significant security measures to combat rising domain theft scams among other features added.
Granted, 7% is high, but expecting prices to stay fixed for for the same goods goods is not reasonable.
Security costs are increasing, for example, as are wages for tech people to run the stack.
It's actually highly reasonable for items with nearly zero marginal cost. In fact, most things in the tech world only get cheaper in nominal value as time progresses, barring peculiar circumstances.
> Over the past decade all registrars have had to add significant security measures to combat rising domain theft scams among other features added.
This is correct. Verisign is not a registrar. While some of the problems do end up on Verisign's plate, almost all of the pain of dealing with fraud, domain transfer scams, etc, falls on the shoulders of the registrars, who get a pitiful cut of the domain registration fee compared to Verisign.
> And your assumption that no new services will be added is likely untrue.
Given the fact that Verisign already sees over $1 billion of annual gross profit, I highly doubt that doubling their revenue will see much in terms of new services that wouldn't have been developed anyway at their current trajectory. An operating cost of $200 million for $1 billion gross profit is already insanely profitable. Cranking it up like this is just an obvious cash grab for the shareholders.
In the middle of transferring another 60 domains over I get a notice that goaddady is taking over uniregistry.
then later that day I see these stories about icann raising the prices even more.
maybe the article about this handshake un-censor-able domains thing will provide some good news for this space. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22310604
What is the most uncensored registrar for .coms now? I refuse to let the names I've been working on be taken over by godaddy.
not lately!
More censorship, not trying to put my eggs in that basket.
Not sure if rtmedia's choice to do that is personal, or because their home country had gotten more aggressive in their pron bans, or maybe they hired on support people who were sensitive, I don't know, but I paid them around $500 and now I have a system that is having trouble and no way to fix it.
I have noticed that some companies are quick to turn over data or discontinue service to places if they get bad press, a request from an agency, and with the wave of cancel culture rising along with gov prudeness in major countries, I think it's better to be somewhere that will fight for speech rather than shrug off something they don't like in the first place.
I wish I knew which registrar stormer got in with - I'd think there is less to worry about there.
Maybe if a co like dreamhost was doing domain names - they have been tested with threats from powerful entities and fought back at least.
The ramble back and forth shows it was a tough decision, but nonetheless they admit to knowing their power controlling so much of the net, and they actively suggest more countries pass more laws to make them hand over even more. They say they do not do anything with the 1st amendment in mind.
https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/
At least they say "We continue to feel incredibly uncomfortable about playing the role of content arbiter and do not plan to exercise it often"
However the pattern I have seen over the years is that lots of noise is made for cloudflare to take something offline, and they say 'we can't, we don't moderate content, we're a dumb pipe' - so lots of groups complain about stuff they don't like, but free speech keeps going. Well that all changed, and now that all these groups will start to know that they will moderate content it's only a matter of the slippery slope.
this part: "what we have done to try and solve the Internet’s deeper problem is engage with law enforcement and civil society organizations to try and find solutions. Among other things, that resulted in us cooperating around monitoring potential hate sites on our network and notifying law enforcement when there was content that contained"
Tells it all to me, but I see it as just the beginning. More will come to them and more will be cancelled. They appear to also be engaging with jurisdictions to also change laws to make it so they can say they are forced to give up the data not that they are voluntarily doing it.
At least that's how I read it.
The .com TLD is supposed to be for commercial use, so for a real company it shouldn't be a big deal to pay $50 or $100 per year or more, and it would free up good domains to be actually used.
You could argue that you don't want to reward squatting, but either way you're going to have to pay off some entity I don't think entirely deserves it.
People's personal names are unlikely to fall in that category.
To handle squatting on .com better, my suggestion would be to have alternative TLDs available at a cheaper price (rather than making .com costlier). That could potentially help by making the others more popular (than now) and reduce the incentives to squat.
And I ought not to have it because I'm not hosting an online store or marketing materials for a megacorp? Fuck me for trying to have something nice without commercializing it, right?
Note: I love Dreamhost, and have used them for 13+ years. The CEO responded to my tweet saying they do not sell queries.
.tk is still free tho!
They cancelled my domain out of the blue. When researching the problem I found out this happened to others as well.
If we really want to stop squatters, I think we should be charging exponentially increasing prices for each additional domain. A domain could be $10 for a new customer, but cost $10,240 for a firm that already holds 10. Such costs wouldn't be prohibitive for people or companies, but incredibly serious for anyone who wants to squat domains.
Another option would be to set a fixed price for ownership transfers and to forbid charging more than that in the ToS. It wouldn't stop squatting, but it would suck all the value out of it because I could negotiate with a squatter to buy a domain and turn around and report them to ICANN so the domain gets revoked and dropped back into the pool.
The biggest problem is that everyone involved, including ICANN, has a lot of incentive to create pseudo property with a limited supply so they can all participate in the rent seeking that comes along with limited supply property.
Even though they'd never admit it, domain squatters are great for ICANN, the registries, and the registrars. The squatters demonstrate domains have value and the (fake) limited supply creates a gold rush style urgency where no one wants to wait until tomorrow to register a domain because a squatter might grab it first.
This is a ridiculous argument that doesn't benefit the company or end consumers at all. Squatting isn't a problem for the vast majority.
The most common complaint every year for two decades now.
At the same time, one could make a very strong case that .com domains should cost more to help combat squatting and speculation. They are a limited resource and too many people (me included) sit on domains "just in case I want to develop the idea" and that has a lot of other unintended consequences we don't want.
Instead of me and every other .com domain owner having to pay the verisign availability tax that only potentially benefits you, why don't you just pay fair market price to whoever owns the domain you want.
If I was a verisign stock holder I'd be all about your plan.
People want a thousand dollars for long, not great domains. If the renewal was higher, I think "market price" would be a little closer to market.
Perhaps a higher initial fee and then renewals would remain the same. Then at least it would discourage future squatting without putting a burden on small time users.
Or, what if instead of all of us paying verisign more money for zero additional value, Coke just pays a million to whoever happens to own newcoke.com if they decide they want that domain?
Sounds like Verisign is a rent-seeking monopoly.
This sounds like a purely artificial pricing process to me... But I'm happy to have my opinion changed on this topic.
And there are still large fixed costs. You need security, rock solid infrastructure, outgoing email infra, executives, attorneys, offices, janitorial staff, and all the other stuff that goes along with running a business.
Finally, it will all turn out to be some $2B profit earned somewhere from having ordered the right Prime Rib dinner at Mar-a-lago. Unless HN enmass makes the visit there, this will go over just like the .org change
This price increase costs a person who own a single domain $3.22 per year. That's conservatively adjusted for inflation, in 2020 dollars, and after 10 years not while it's still increasing. At minimum wage, this price increase is costing you an extra 3.4 to 6.1 seconds per work day, depending on the state.
In other words, if you own a single domain, this increase does not affect you.
It does affect you, though, if you own thousands of domains that you aren't using. The word for that is "domain squatter".
It also affects you if you're a registrar and you're aware that most domains are held by squatters, therefore that most of your revenue comes from squatters.
This price increase doesn't affect me or other legitimate domain holders, has already made my trigger-happy friends tell me they're going to review their domains and let go of the ones they probably won't use, and may even make some types of domain squatting unprofitable. This price increase is good for the internet.
Domain squatting wouldn't be an issue if domains were $5 / year with a thousand gTLDs. Instead, there are premium pricing games on every gTLD and Google, etc. are doing their best to de-emphasize domain names and URLs.
That said, I do agree that domain squatting is a problem which should be addressed. I don't think this is the way to do it though.
I aquire that insight from some EVE online economist who argued fees should be high enough to make exploiting the [ingame] property a requirement. (and that this logics should apply to other non-gaming things like land tax) If a game doesn't work like that it just gets boring with few players owning everything while not doing jack shit with it. You get "ghost" towns like London.
A discount for purchasing multiple domains with the same name under different TLD's also seems reasonable. A German should be able to get .de and .com as a package and .fr should be cheap.
With the new found fortune squatters could get a refund for everything they let go of.
Domains are basically property, so why not start charging people fair market value for the physical property they own that's appreciated significantly over the last several decades?
And if you're talking about only doing it for new domains, all that does is massively increase the value of good grandfathered domains, so it's even better for the squatters.
We do that with property taxes. That's the biggest slice of personally owned, likely to appreciate, physical property. When a property is sold, we also tax the proceeds from that, similar to domains.
In my cities shopping street an increasingly large number of stores became investment vehicles for people who just live there. Shopping there just becomes... well... bullshit.
The 3 letter COM domain street should be entirely populated by serious business imho
Your buddy can sell it or he can get a 20 year refund. Depending on the character combination he might be sitting on 150 k or it might be worth millions.
Pumping up the fee by that much would probably hurt the value a lot which is a good thing.
People need to start businesses that need names that customers can remember. We shouldn't limit the real economy for people who feel entitled to something for nothing.
You’re talking about seizing people’s property and selling it off to the highest bidder. Who gets that money? And, like I said, it’s a ccTLD (.ca). A 3 letter .ca is worth about $5k USD.
And based on your other comments it sounds like you think people in developing countries should use the ccTLD for their country and leave the popular TLDs for the big businesses. No thanks. Your suggestion is way worse than dealing with domain squatters.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that a 7% increase every 1.5 years wouldn't change much at all about the domain market. The only thing it would break is using value estimation algorithms so rough that you need to squat on 10,000 domains just to find one that somebody actually pays for. But, of course, that would mean displacing hundreds of people that have legitimate uses for those domains yet can't justify the asking price, and I'm sure not many people have such a disregard for others that they're willing to displace hundreds of people just to make one sale.
It's always struck me it should be even cheaper than it is.
Perhaps cc.tld registries should be able to register any non-cc domain. Then registrars could shop for the best service.
If you go to x.com, you'll visit the actual x.com, which literally just shows an x. However, you'll see a suggestion for the top companies that are "secondarily registered" (for free) to that domain, in order of popularity and some other metrics. You can make one of those secondary x.com's the default, so that when you visit x.com, you visit their alternative website instead.
There are some issues to sort out with that system, such as whether secondary registration (or at least the auto-suggest) should be allowed for the likes of Facebook and other established, popular, trademarked brands. Another question would be that, if x.com is parked by a squatter, should the more visited x.com's be able to bid for your domain?
Here's how bidding would work. Only established companies with a name that corresponds to the domain name would be able to bid. Bidding would only be open for a pre-specified time frame. The domain name owner would be free to notify everyone with an established company that goes by that name to get in on the bidding action. Users would be able to flag websites operated by dead/zombie companies, and an independent committee would convene (digitally) to vote on whether bidding should be re-opened.
Naming is actually an issue with startups. We should reduce friction as much as possible for entrepreneurs because it's already hard to start a company as it is. It would be great if you can just pick the best name that isn't taken by a major brand and move on to more important matters. Down the line, you can give customers a small reward for defaulting your version of the domain.
Now if only I could figure out who reviews the reviewers...
What if I create a startup called X, and successfully petition to convert x.com to an index. I'll be on the index, and if I get big enough, I'll be able to win any bid to become the "primary" domain owner rather than a secondary registrant. However, a VC firm that didn't invest in my startup can realize that I'm gaining traction. What they could do is fund another "X" startup that does the same thing and gets listed on the same index.
Their version of "X" could steal my thunder, and they can use the resulting profits to justify their investment in the highest bid for x.com. Under the system that I described, they can still bid for the domain, they just wouldn't be able to blatantly hack attention by listing their website next to mine in the index. I would be the very obvious first name in a small window showing the top secondary x.com's by traffic. Almost everyone would click the first one, and then default my website if they like it. Of course, they can expand the modal window into a de-facto index, but that would be if they really want to see everyone beyond the top 3 x.coms.
The scenario I’d try to avoid is this: a world where, even if you create a startup with a reasonably unique name, you can nonetheless 100% count on someone trying to steal your thunder once your idea is validated. If they succeed, and they win when bidding opens, then you and your investors will get a haircut for losing your brand. You might never fully recover, or it could be a fatal blow.
I must admit, I can’t say that’s an unmitigated bad outcome. In the end, your investors didn’t help increase the bid when they had the chance, which means they value your potential less than that of the other X. I could see the whole system resulting in a market for domain bidding loans, and the terms of the loan would be more favorable (low rate, long maturity) the more mature your company is and the more credible the vision.
At least a ton more names would be available, so the potential competitor would be more likely to pick another name to begin with. Savage competition would only appear on obvious names like X. I would still be concerned about large companies trying to squash startups and make life as hard as possible for them, but I’m sure there’s a way around that. The rules governing the system would have to effectively outlaw such actions, as adjudicated and penalized by an independent committee. The system would have to be as fair as possible to startups, and perhaps even biased towards them, so that society may reap the positive externalities of competition.
A hybrid between my idea and yours would only force the index schema on the most extremely simple domain names. Most combinations of two words (not a common phrase) and most “non-words” that do not correspond to a valuable company would be really easy for a startup to grab. They’d be able to force bidding to open immediately, skipping the index stage. The domain owner would have some amount of time to notify pre-existing businesses with the same name, if they exist, so that they have a chance to bid.
Example: let’s say kentmobile.com is parked and you are a UK-based 5G startup. For whatever reason, you want to be named after the UK province of Kent. The only other business actually named Kent Mobile is a seedy mobile repair shop in the province. You can force bidding to open, and only you and that seedy store will be able to bid. Your business has much more potential, so you will definitely win the bid without paying an enormous sum to the domain owner. Without such a system, the domain owner can neglect to even list their domain for sale, intentionally preempt competition (ex: if Facebook parks some of the best potential social network names), irrationally strike down offers, or ask for an unreasonably high sum.
I would still bring in the review panel for that bidding war for an existing businesses website. The 5G company should probably outbid the previous owner by some proportional amount.
I find internet navigation [by name] to be a fascinating puzzle since I don't really like any of the ideas. I'm going to have to think about it for a few more years.
I think one feature of the system that would mitigate any issues with indices or bidding is the ability for users to "default" a website to a particular domain name. To use another example than x.com - let's say GrubHub didn't exist, and it was being founded today, but GrubHub.com is parked. Instead of using a sub-optimal name or paying tons of money for a domain before they even have revenue, they could go ahead and launch GrubHub.com as a "secondary domain." Users of their iOS/Android app would be told "hey, to get your $10 signup bonus, tap on this link and press 'default as grubhub.com on all devices.'" The users would gladly oblige, because they'd rather have grubhub.com point to an actual service rather than some rent-seeker's landing page. That's especially if there's free money involved. Once GrubHub gets momentum, they will be well-positioned to win the eventual bid, which won't have many bidders. There aren't many companies named GrubHub out there. Again, if they anticipate very limited/no competition in an auction, they can just force the bid to happen before formally launching and maybe pay a few hundred dollars for grubhub.com.
How can we break this? Should we do a crowdfunded gtld for a not-for-profit permanent gtld?
Plus, the premium registrations are incredibly poorly thought out. For example, you can buy wifi.cloud for $55,000 up front plus $1,100 per year or you can go to afternic where the minimum offer on wificloud.com is $2000. Which would you rather own (neither IMO, but...)?
I think the new gTLDs would have done better if they'd have positioned themselves as a small business alternative to domain squatters. A small business would be excited to have pc.tech for their website, but not for $10k/year. IMO, you'd be better off buying a good, generic .com off afternic for $100k at that point because you'd be breaking even in about 15 years (assuming 6% interest) plus it has some resale value if you don't make it 15 years.